Brightly Burning (5 page)

“This is the boy,” Archer said, putting his hand squarely in the middle of Lan's back and pushing him forward, so that he was between Archer and the desk.

“Lavan, isn't it?” the man said, making a note on a piece of paper in front of him. “Lavan Chitward. Very good; as soon as I know where to place him, we'll have him settled in no time.”

“Aye. I'll be going, then, Master Keileth, I've work to do.” Lan turned to look at his father, inarticulate protests freezing on his lips; Archer did not look at him at all. He was perfectly satisfied that he had done his duty, and Master Keileth dismissed him with a nod of thanks.

“Very good, and thank you, Master Chitward. I hope that we will be able to please you with Lavan's accomplishments.” Obviously that was what counted with Master Keileth—pleasing Archer Chitward, not his son.

Archer opened the door and left without a backward glance at Lan; Master Keileth motioned impatiently to Lan to take a seat. “Sit down, young man,” the Master ordered when Lan did not immediately obey. “I'm not minded to put a crick in my neck looking up at you.”

Lan obeyed him, gingerly perching on one of the hard wooden seats, and positioning himself nervously on the very edge of the chair.

Master Keileth gave all his attention to the paper in front of him for a time, then looked up abruptly. His smile was gone, and his eyes held a calculating expression.

“Your father is paying a great deal of money for this opportunity you are enjoying,” Master Keileth said abruptly. “I trust that you intend to make his expenditure worth his sacrifice.” His mud-colored eyes narrowed a trifle as he waited for a response.

Lan immediately felt a surge of guilt; why hadn't his father told him this? He flushed a little, and Master Keileth's eyes showed that he had noted the flush and found it satisfactory.

Lan dropped his eyes, and Master Keileth did
not
see the flush of anger that had followed the guilt.
Why was Father willing to pay for this, but not to let me go home and live there? Why did he give up the house in Alderscroft where I was happy?

He only raised his eyes again when he had his feelings under control. Master Keileth was watching him as carefully as a cat at a mouse hole.

“I'm going to ask you some questions, Lavan, so that we know where to place you.” Another thin smile that did not reach the cool gray eyes. “You are fortunate in that your family chose to move when they did. Our school term is just beginning; we will not have to place you in a special class and give you extra tutoring to force you to catch up.”

Without waiting for Lan to answer, the Master began asking, not a
few
questions, but a great many. Lan was forced to dredge up everything he had learned at the hands of the village priest and quite a bit he thought he had forgotten.

By the time Master Keileth was done with him, he was sweating, and quite sure that the Master had decided he was a complete ignoramus. He sat slumped over slightly, feeling completely drained.

Master Keileth gave no indication how he felt about Lan. He simply made more notes, ignoring Lan altogether. After what seemed like an eternity, the Master finally looked up again.

“Satisfactory, given your limited education,” he said. “I believe we can place you in the Third Form.”

Lan had no notion what that was supposed to mean, but when Master Keileth beckoned peremptorily, Lan rose and followed him out of the office and into the hall.

They climbed to the third floor, the murmur of voices all around him. Master Keileth brought him into a corridor identical to the one below. This time, they went as far as the middle of the corridor—far enough to see that there were others branching from it—before Master Keileth stopped at a door and opened it without knocking.

The sounds from within the room stopped immediately, and with a scrape of chairs, everyone in the room stood up.

When Lan entered, he saw that there were eight adolescents, six males and two females, at small desks facing a larger one, at which an adult teacher presided. They were all younger than he, about fourteen to his sixteen.

“Herewan, this is a new student, Lavan Chitward,” Master Keileth said in his brusque manner. “I have assigned him to the Third Form. Choose someone in this section to take him through his classes.”

That said, the Master left as abruptly as he had arrived, leaving Lan to face nine strangers alone.

OWYN, the boy assigned to show him around, was a serious, studious youngster with huge brown eyes, untidy dark brown hair, and an unfinished air like a young owl, who performed his duty with utmost solemnity. As Lan had expected, if he had been ranked with his age group, he should have been in Fourth or Fifth Form, and being ranked with the students his junior was a mark against him. His own classmates regarded him with a certain veiled scorn for his lack of what they considered common knowledge.

Their lives were marked by bells which rang to signify the changing of classes and mealtimes. Pupils remained in their seats; it was the teachers who moved from room to room to impart their specialized knowledge. Lan's set began with Geography, which meant trade routes; routes whose particulars they were expected to have by rote. This knowledge was not only that of finding the way on an unmarked map, but of climate, conditions in each season, dangers on the way, and so forth. They were drilled mercilessly until every person in the class had the current route down perfectly, and only then did the class as a whole move on to the next route. This fascinated Lan; in his mind, he
saw
the conditions the teacher described, and he had no difficulty in memorizing the route, though he wondered if he might start to get routes mixed up when he had to recall more than one.

At the end of the class, the pupils stood up as their teacher left the room—Owyn poking him in the back when he wasn't quick enough—and a new teacher entered.

The next three classes were in language: Hardornen, Rethwellan, and Border dialects. Lan's head was stuffed full before the break came for lunch, and he wondered how he was ever going to keep the languages from running together.

At the sound of the noon bell, the other students jumped up and stampeded for the door. Owyn solemnly took Lan in charge and led him down to the first floor, down a staircase packed full of strange people. Owyn didn't really have to show Lan the refectory where they all took their lunch. Every pupil in the school was headed in that direction, all of them chattering at the tops of their lungs. The two boys just went along, carried on the stream.

When they got to the door of the refectory, though, Owyn deserted him, squirming past students who were younger than either of them, and vanishing.

Lan got out of the traffic to have a look around. This was an enormous room, high-ceilinged and echoing, with the dark timbers of the support beams showing starkly against the white plaster of the ceiling itself. Up above the wainscoting were windows surrounded by handsome carved wood, but from head height on down there were only plain oak panels. There were four long plain oak tables running the length of the room, with chairs, plates, and silverware marking each place. That seemed a little odd to Lan; he would have expected benches, until he saw how that even with the spacing between each student enforced by the seating they managed to poke and elbow each other. There seemed to be no particular order in which people were seated, although there were obviously seats that were preferred. Those Lan's age and older had taken over the seats at the ends of the tables nearest the kitchen doors; it was obvious why, as they were already being served beef and bread and new peas while the rest were still getting seated. The seats least in favor were farthest from the kitchen, and those near the fireplaces, where stray breezes sent random puffs of smoke out into the room from the fire burning there.

Friends sat together, forming little cliques; sideways glances and whispered comments discouraged approach. Owyn was in one of those, though his group was in a set of the less-favored seats. Lan hesitated, then took an unoccupied chair at the end of one of the tables. By the time he got started on his lukewarm meal, the students at the head of the table were already devouring their second and third portions.

Across from Lan sat a very plain, lumpish girl who kept her head down and didn't look up from her plate. Next to him was a nervous boy much younger than Lan, eleven or twelve, perhaps, who bolted his food so quickly Lan was afraid he was going to choke, and vanished from the table, casting backward glances over his shoulder as he scuttled away.

Shortly Lan found out why he had been in such a hurry to leave. One of the oldest boys, a square-jawed, stereotypically handsome specimen of about eighteen with crisply cut dark-blond hair and indolent dark-blue eyes, strolled down from his exalted seat and surveyed the lesser beings at the lowest end of the table with his hands clasped behind his back, looking for all the world as if he was surveying the offerings at a horse fair.

He took his time about it. Lan decided that discretion was the proper tactic to pursue, and quietly continued to eat, ignoring the young man's arrogant gaze. He could feel eyes burning a hole between his shoulder blades, though, and he didn't like the feeling in the least.

The chattering at this end of the table quieted, and now Lan sensed that there were a great many more eyes on him.

“So, this is the new one.” A hand fell on Lan's shoulder, and he restrained the impulse to slap it away. “I hear they put you with the babies, boy. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Lan kept silent, but the arrogant one was joined by three or four of his peers, lesser copies out of the same mold, who rose from their seats and gathered around him. The biggest of them grabbed Lan's chin and wrenched his head around.

“Speak when you're spoken to, country boy,” his harasser said in a deceptively pleasant voice. “Sixth Formers are the masters here; the rest of you are scum. The sooner you get that into your head, the better it will be for you.”

“Don't argue with him!”
the homely girl whispered harshly, and the older boy suddenly turned on her.

“Did you speak out of turn, Froggy?” he asked, with a savage, joyful smile.

The girl shrank down, looking very like a frightened frog. Her olive skin went pale, and she hid her overlarge eyes under the thick, coarse fringe of her dark hair. “He's new, sir,” she whispered miserably. “No one's told him the rules, sir. He can't know what to do if he doesn't know the rules, sir.”

Lan's first attacker took pity on her. “Quite right, Froggy. We won't have our ladies paint you today. Must tell the new one the rules,
then
we can flog him if he disobeys.”

The second one pulled Lan up out of his seat by his collar, then knocked his feet out from under him with a sweep of his leg. The rest of the oldest students had gathered around by then, and they howled with laughter as Lan went to his hands and knees. Lan bit back a yelp of pain, but his eyes watered. Another grabbed a handful of Lan's hair and yanked, forcing his face up so that he looked the leader full in the face.

“Scrawny, undersized,” said the leader meditatively. “We've already got one Rabbit, so that's out of the question. But you—you're decidedly scrubby. I believe I will call you Scrub. Now listen well, Scrub.”

Lan was red with fury, his insides churning; his knees ached and his head felt as if they'd already torn his hair out. He started to say something, then bit back the words. This was not the time to get into a fight. He was dreadfully outnumbered, and he wouldn't stand a chance.

“The Sixth Formers are the rightful rulers here. You will address us all as ‘sir' and ‘mistress'—unless you happen to prefer ‘my lord' and ‘my lady,' in which case you may use those terms instead.”

Somebody sniggered, and the leader turned a cold gaze on him; the sniggering stopped immediately.

“You, on the other hand, will be known by the name we have chosen for you—in your case, Scrub—and you will answer to that name, or be flogged, or suffer whatever other punishment we deem appropriate.” The handsome Sixth Former was obviously in his element and enjoying himself very much; Lan thought with fury about how much he wanted to blacken those blue eyes and rub mud into that beautiful blond hair. “You will give place to us, give way before us, speak only when you are spoken to, and accomplish whatever task we set you, or be punished. And it is no use complaining to the Master, because if you do, we shall flog you with twice as many strokes. The Master has given Sixth Form the responsibility for maintaining discipline, and he'll assume you are a liar, a slacker, or both if you complain to him. You are nothing; we are everything. Do you understand?”